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New lights, cameras for Surrey road after fourth body in six weeks dumped (with video)

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts responds to the fourth body dumped on Surrey's Colebrook Road in the last six weeks.

METRO VANCOUVER -- Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts says closed-circuit cameras and special lighting will be installed along Colebrook Road after four bodies were dumped in the rural area in just six weeks.

Watts met Wednesday with Surrey RCMP Chief Supt. Bill Fordy and area residents to discuss her concerns about the disturbing discovery of the latest two murder victims – a man and a woman – on Colebrook near 125 A Avenue at about 2 a.m.

After two other murdered men linked to the drug trade were found along the same stretch of road in January and February, police stepped up patrols in the area.

It was one of those patrols that made the grisly find early Wednesday.

Sgt. Jennifer Pound, of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said officers have not made links between the four murders. Nor had they released the identity of the latest two victims.

A spike in murders in Surrey this year is believed to be part of a violent power struggle over the drug trade because of a vacuum resulting from high-profile slayings of members of the Dhak gang.

“When you have got the Bacon brothers put away, you’ve got Dhak, you’ve got (Jujhar) Khun-Khun, you’ve got these other people who’ve either been taken out of the game or they have been murdered themselves, then the jockeying goes on,” Watts said.

She said dumping of bodies creates more investigative challenges for police who have to find the primary crime scene.

“That is very concerning, not only the murders but the fact that people are dumping them,” Watts said.

Watts met with some residents from the area to address their concerns over the bodies being dumped. And she said city staff will be meeting with more people in the affluent area of view homes and horse properties.

“We are just going to have a conversation with more neighbours in the area and let them know and get some feedback from them,” Watts said. “We are putting together a plan in the area. We are looking at lighting, additional patrols, as well as cameras.”

Watts drove by the crime scene Wednesday morning and said she was “absolutely without a doubt” alarmed by the number of murders in Surrey this year.

“I just wanted to see where it was. I am just going to go get some information,” she said.

“It’s problematic. We are seeing something here that is very concerning to myself.”

IHIT officers were at the dump site with a forensic identification team through the day Wednesday. An Abbotsford police cruiser arrived late morning.

Colebrook Road is a perfect dump spot. Surrounded by farmer’s fields and train tracks, it has few houses or witnesses.

Area resident Shari MacFarlane said she has lived just off Colebrook Road for 11 years and feels completely safe.

“I am here alone, no dog. I feel safe. It is a very peaceful area. It is a wonderful place to have lived,” said MacFarlane. “There is a real sense of community here.”

She said police had stopped by after the January and February slayings to ask if she had heard or seen anything. She hadn’t.

“They are people involved in bad activities and this just happens to be a remote spot to dump. But it’s very eerie,” she said. “No matter what, when people start messing with gangs, you never get away.”

MacFarlane regularly rides her horse down Colebrook and through the neighbourhood parks. She has seen drug deals and couples looking for an isolated spot. But the worst irritant to area residents has been the garbage dumped along Colebrook.

Balbir Gellen, who lives on Panorama Ridge, was on his daily walk when he learned from reporters Wednesday that the road was closed because of two more murders.

“If it is happening, cops have to put some sort of camera or surveillance or maybe only allow residents to drive onto that street,” he said. “That is police job. They have to control all that and catch the people who are doing it. The people living in the neighbourhood can’t stop it and they have no control over it.”

The man’s body found Wednesday was in the exact spot where 29-year-old Delta resident Amritpal (Paul) Saran was found burned and dumped on Feb. 24.

Saran had numerous run-ins with the law, including a charge of assaulting a peace officer. He was known to police, but not thought to have any gang affiliations.

The body of another homicide victim, Jaskaran Singh Sandhu, was also found a on Colebrook Road on Jan. 28. Before he was killed, Sandhu had survived a Coquitlam shooting and had gang links

Surrey has had a violent beginning to 2013.

Earlier in February, the body of Vimal Chand was found in a car across from an elementary school, just days after his family had reported him missing.

On Jan. 15, longtime gangster Manjinder (Manny) Hairan was shot to death near 127 Street and 112B Avenue. Just two days earlier, another Dhak associate named Manjot Singh Dhillon was killed in a targeted shooting near 168 Street and 76 Avenue.

The same night two drug dealers John Edward McGiveron and Geordie Wesley Carlow, both 33, were shot to death in a parkade of an apartment complex at 9450 128th Street.